The Editors

Mark Schmitt weighs in on the VP pick: I don’t know Biden and he doesn’t know me, but I saw a lot of him during the two-year struggle to construct and pass the 1993 Crime Bill. Like many things associated with Biden, it was an open-ended, rambling process. I was on the staff of Sen. […]

Former TAP intern-extraordinaire and recent Ezra Klein guest blogger Dylan Matthews has a rundown of the 15 Obama staffers you should know. Also, check out our interview with Rep. Artur Davis (D-AL). As always, consider subscribing to our RSS feed so you can get notice of articles as we publish them. –The Editors

Derek Chollet and James Goldgeier argue that the Bush administration’s recent moves leftward represent the collapse of the conservative foreign policy establishment that has dominated our relations with the rest of the world for decades: Over the last year, the Bush administration has undergone a sort of deathbed conversion to a traditional diplomacy characterized by […]

Adam Serwer writes that Rep. Stephen Cohen‘s primary challenger, Nikki Turner tried to exploit the same fear of outsiders John McCain has used against Barack Obama: Fox’s Hannity and Colmes invited the Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson onto the show to say what white right-wing pundits would feel less comfortable saying. Peterson blamed the entire black […]

Gershom Gorenberg explains why a much-discussed new Israeli film is so important: By seeking his own memory, Folman assaults national forgetfulness — about the war, the massacre, and Ariel Sharon, the man who planned the invasion and let the massacre take place. As in the best stories, the specifics point to the universal: This is […]

Spencer Ackerman decodes the Orwellian language that’s often used to talk about Iraq: OMENS OF PROSPERITY Here’s something that might count as a breaking euphemism. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki last week ordered 50,000 Iraqi troops to conduct raids throughout Diyala province, which U.S. officials boasted of being increasingly pacified in 2007. The operation is called […]

Dana Goldstein writes about the collapse of for-profit public school company Edison Schools and the politics of its rebirth as an educational technology company: The “Edison School Design” would combine a number of reform strategies proven effective for low-income students, including small schools-within-schools, longer school days and years, frequent diagnostic testing, and uniform reading and […]

Adam Serwer explains why McCain‘s recent anti-Obama Britney and Paris ad played on racial prejudices, but not in the way you think: But what’s garnered the most attention is the juxtaposition of Obama with two white women known for their sex appeal. Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo compared the ad to the infamous Harold […]

Rich Byrne argues that Joe McGinniss‘ The Selling of the President 1968 is underrated and is still relevant forty years after its publication: Forty years on, McGinniss and the prominent Nixon staffers of his generation are in their late 60s. But The Selling of the President 1968 holds valuable lessons for the present generation of […]